How to Disappear Completely
by firstForward
Summary: Ryou; a game piece trapped in Monster World. It's difficult not to lose your mind when you have no body with which to feel. For Ryou, he can only cling to the one desire he still has left. To defeat the Ring Spirit.


How to Disappear Completely

It was a simple object, very ordinary and uninteresting in every respect. A cube, with ten sides. Each side had a certain number. Yet even as plain as this white cube was, still they stood surrounding it and one other, eyes lit with something like a wild hunger.

_Whoever possessed the dice controlled the game world._

Clunky limbs not moving as easily as he would have liked, Bakura moved to stand by the door, in the corner. A little over a dozen others with backs turned to him eyed the dice and argued intensely. Men. Women. Teenagers. All dressed in varying gear; some prepared as if to hunt beasts, while others were plainly clothed in bland colours. Bakura himself was of the more oddly dressed among the group, a fact which made many wary around him. A white robe and hat hung stiffly on his body, crimping hair that lay jagged on his shoulders.

He would not have been in the room, in the hut that at the best of times served as a pretend bar and at the worst caged them from the haunting eyes from above. But interactions with the others had become almost distant lately, driving him to stall at seeing their faces; not being able to remember names. Bakura wondered if he was becoming as mindless as they all seemed to be, having a shouting match over the table on which the dice rested. He certainly hoped not. So he tried to pay attention, and feel empathy for the restless hands and grinding teeth attached to numbed bodies.

And he tried to remember how to feel.

"You've dictated where we go for too long," snapped a man to another Bakura remembered but couldn't quite place. The others rushed out words to gain advantage in the conversation.

"We aren't being fairly given choice over what terrain we can enter!"

"I'm so sick of attacking monsters in the forest."

"It's time for the dice to change hands. Someone else needs to be making decisions for a while."

Turning his eyes outside, Bakura ignored the flimsy plastic that mimicked glass and tried to see to the edge of the world. Bright greens, darkened by the state of no lighting, were laid out before his eyes. He kept staring, listening to the pounding of fists on the table, and made out the brown wall beyond. The edge of the game, so solid and definite.

Bakura wondered, sometimes, if the Spirit ever listened in on their conversations.

Inside the little bar on the gaming table in one Ryou Bakura's apartment, neighbours and teachers and friends and bullies all argued over their own movement while he listened on, desensitized to it all. They were nameless to him; he thought of them more along the lines of That One Guy Who Played With Me a Long Time Ago, and That Guy With the Glasses I Never Liked. But though he knew them like this, they never forgot.

They knew exactly who he was.

"Well, if I can't have the dice, and you can't have them, _Bakura_ can decide," sneered someone, startling Bakura out of his thoughts.

He turned, cautiously, as the entire argument halted, and every set of eyes settled on him. Bakura would have swallowed, if he had the capacity for such a thing. "I thought you didn't like me deciding things," he said very quietly.

A warrior with a thoughtful frustrated expression, sword sticking in what looked like but would never actually be an uncomfortable position against his thigh, muttered at Bakura, "This is your place, isn't it? Aren't we all just pieces for life —you're the only one ever leaving here, right? So why aren't you the one making decisions?"

It sounded so odd, Bakura considered. So dull. Morning news. Today at 5:00 Game Piece Realizes He Will Never Leave Game World. In Other News, Traffic Congestion is at its Highest.

"We don't know that for sure. The spirit could not need me anymore. I'm just here..." Bakura almost tried to cough, but remembered just in time, "to test out the world. But he can lie. He does terrible things. So terrible things could happen to me, just as they happen to you."

"Or maybe _you're_ the liar," said the man in a bartender's outfit, someone he knew had hit him at least once before. Bakura tried to hunch wooden shoulders. "You could be working with that _thing_, using us, just as terrible as he is. You could be that guy people always end up hearing about on the television. The harmless looking guy who turns out to be a murderer."

They all shuffled now, whether anxiously or as an attempt to _feel_ anxious, Bakura didn't know. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop him," he mumbled, fidgeting along with them.

"If you're just going to stand there watching us, kid, get out," said one of the men, shortly.

Bakura stayed for just a moment, waiting for what, he didn't know. Some reason to feel like he wasn't being cut off, little by little from the living, he supposed. But he only received speculative stares and doll-like glares, crooked and meaningless. So he trudged outside, sanded hand somehow able to open the door.

The argument continued as he mucked around with his feet for a bit, clunking them against the very decent likeness of grass that was the ground beneath him. Bakura knew where he'd had trouble getting the terrain to fit the board, as little bumps hinted that it had not been laid out as flatly as he would have liked. He wondered if the old him would have minded much.

His apartment was dark, but that was as limiting an indication as anything, really, and could have suggested that the blinds were closed or that the Spirit just liked darkness. But Bakura chose to think of it as night, and tried to figure out what to do with himself given the time. He settled for a robotic rhythm towards the castle, which was as good a place as any to keep away from the Spirit's gaze. Without his movement roll, his progression was considerably slow, but at least he could not be considered an active piece and so would not be hindered by monsters.

Halfway to the castle, he began to realize his mistake in leaving in the midst of an important argument.

They started to make their way out of the building, pushing and shoving others around them. Bakura watched, stock-still and unnoticed, as the one who had won possession of the dice finally exited. There was shouting which he could not make out, and then the dice fell from smooth hands, tumbling across the board.

It should have been horrifying, to see one pull a finely crafted wooden blade on another figure, but Bakura could only think, with limbs fumbling back to the bar, if there would be any indication at all of death when for all intents and purposes they were already dead.

He levelled a staff, which he almost never used, and remembered suddenly that no one was interested in rolling for him —no one ever had— and he was powerless without the dice.

A man who'd shortchanged him one time, and so existed in Bakura's mind as only this, was given a roll that only barely saved his life. At this point they all seemed to be forming groups, and that was perhaps what was buying him time in order to come up with a solution. There probably weren't many solutions to be had at that point, but regardless Bakura fumbled over little bumps in his terrain and tried to come up with a way to make himself an active game piece.

"What if the Spirit becomes angry that some pieces are damaged, and goes out hunting for new souls," he whispered, at once knowing the inkling of a thought that would have been fearful, if he could have felt it.

Something stirred in the world, as his mind continued with his slow —so agonizingly slow— feet, approaching thoughts that hadn't been dusted off in years.

"What if the Spirit becomes angry that some pieces are damaged, and takes me out of the game to make more pieces!" Came the near miserable noise, if a figurine's mouth could have produced noises for misery. He didn't want to be part of the cause for more people being trapped. He still had that desire, at least, that lingering need to be away from the Spirit's schemes.

The terrain was smoother at this point, Bakura remembered, and grew bolder in his footsteps as the bumps disappeared. Something was whistling in his hat-covered ears. Was a window left open in the apartment?

Bakura reached the site of the argument, and they acknowledged him only briefly before turning back to the rolling dice, which would allow for the counterattack of a gunman who looked ready to take on anything. Bakura tried to raise his voice. "What will happen if the Spirit gets angry?" He croaked, trying to get a favourable reaction. Surely no one wanted to anger him.

"It doesn't matter."

"_Nothing_ matters."

"I won't have someone telling me when to move!"

"Well _I_ won't either!"

Forcing himself forward with what will he had, Bakura stood between the gunman now eligible to do damage and the man who had originally rolled the dice. "S-stop!" He said firmly.

"Get out of the way before I make you a part of the landscape," the gunman replied, finger on the trigger.

It wasn't a very good threat: the Spirit would likely remove useless pieces from the game world. Bakura tried to clamp down on this bumbling thought, and stood straighter. "You can't hurt anybody. I won't be responsible for anyone getting hurt. It's bad enough that you're in here because of me."

Furious looking, crooked face. The trigger finger flexed slightly. "Oh, you won't be responsible! That's it, huh, not because you care? You won't take _responsibility_! You coward. The Spirit can take responsibility for us hurting each other, then. And you can just stand there, doing _nothing_. Not even realizing you've already got that weight on your shoulders."

"I'm not going to move! You'll stop," Bakura said hopefully, the edge of desperation that didn't exist whistling through his ears.

"You don't even have a dice roll!" Someone mocked.

"You're just a useless game piece."

"You _never_ made the decisions around here!"

"But, but this is—" Bakura tried to argue back.

A human. An elf. A bartender. All wooden pieces, dressed in colours he'd...

Carefully painting the sleeves with a fine brush, trying to get the eye colour just right. Bakura remembered. Fiddling with designs, doodling in the corner of his notebook. Each one had to be just right. Had to look exactly like the real person, with only minor modifications. He remembered.

The gunman made to fire.

This was his game world. His heart and soul had gone into its creation. He'd wanted it custom. He'd spent a lot of time and effort...

"Fire at me instead," Bakura told the gunman. It should have been no use. The man was aiming over his shoulder, but somehow something made his wrist turn. And Bakura, face unmoving, watched as his mind continued to whirl. Thoughts finally fell off of dusty shelves, the thoughts that bound Bakura to the impossible things he believed in. Thoughts like: I wish I could be the one to beat the Ring Spirit.

He was aware, dimly, that his health was low as it was. Wizards did not wear heavy armour, nor were meant for intense combat or sustained damage. Bakura was a wizard who defended himself with magic, and nothing else, and the only magic that existed in the game came about from two very ordinary, uninteresting objects with ten sides. And no one ever rolled for him.

No one ever would, he supposed. Perhaps it didn't matter.

For something else had followed him into the board game; something he hadn't expected. The magic that existed on paper and not in dice...and it had a name.

"Change of Heart," Bakura whispered.

It had always been his favourite card.

Maybe that's why the winged woman, gripping the gunman's wrist very firmly, smiled gently at him as the finger pulled the trigger and the gun fired.

Bakura fell to the floor with a clunk. He could still see edges of the bar in his vision, the familiar building that had been more of a cage to hide in than anything, during all the time that he'd been inside the world. Bakura wondered if that would be his last sight, and hoped not. They seemed like dreary thoughts, to imagine what one might see last, but it was something he hadn't much imagined before so he pursued the train with vague interest.

Meanwhile, above him the magic that sooner belonged in his deck than in an RPG game floated over, ethereal form seeming more like a trick of his sight than anything real and substantial. Her fingers hovered for a moment over him, then swooped down to press over his forehead. Bakura took the hint and closed his eyes.

Around him, the violence sort of stopped. The others did not seem certain of how to approach this new development. With Bakura now nothing more than a hunk of wood in their eyes, they crowded back towards the bar, at greater ease than they had been in a long time. An enemy no one had truly directly named, save for the occasional accusation of consorting with the Spirit. The one who had kept away from them, whilst saying nothing and looking on with the same haunting eyes as the one above them. Relief would have been palpable. But the figurines merely nodded, grumbled about dice control, and settled for arguing about it some more, but less aggressively. Eventually they headed inside.

Not dead, but considerably damaged, Bakura hefted himself up into a sitting position, and the spell card hovered across from him. "Thank-you," he said, and wished he could feel grateful.

Change of Heart gracefully accepted the thanks and unaccompanied apology for its lack of tone, bending her head just slightly. Bakura looked at his chest, and almost wished for there to be a visible wound. It would have made more sense.

The apartment was still dark, but now he had a new problem to deal with aside from his wish to avoid the Spirit's gaze. The others needed to continue to believe that he was dead, or there would be more fighting, he was sure of it. Picking himself up, Bakura turned for the castle once more. It was the only thing that he could hope to hide in.

She floated along behind him as he walked, silent —it was possible she couldn't speak. Bakura was assured then, at least, of still being involved with the living in some form. Though spirit she was, he decided he was pleased that she was with him. He wasn't totally lost; his mind was still sane and safe, at least so long as the spirit of his favourite card continued to keep him company.

"You'll stay here with me, right," Bakura said.

Change of Heart just smiled.

"I guess that was a silly thought. You'll stay. Just so long as I don't change my mind?"

Bakura watched as she held her hands to her chest, in a gesture of the heart she normally carried, startling him, as much as he could be startled. She seemed comfortable with the lack of object to hold, but it made Bakura halt at the foot of the castle. She paused with him in perfect timing, waiting with a patience that would have matched a heartless doll's.

The castle was ominous looking. "I'm sorry." Said Bakura. Again, the slight nod. Accepting.

Just inside, a figurine Bakura had prepared even more carefully than the others stood tall in the middle of the darkened space. Powerful and monstrous, the figure was a perfect creature for the Dark Master to control. Bakura, unfeeling, trailed by a spell, drew up to a breath away from the hulk of the inactive creature. There existed in the space all the silence in the world of a spirit and a soul, just contemplating what was before them.

"I think," said Bakura, and the spirit hovered closer, "I should like to hide away for a long while. Until the Spirit is ready to make his move, when he thinks I am nothing. I think I want to beat him. Maybe I will lose, but..."

He'd played this game, more than the Spirit ever had. Surely he was in the best position now, as part of the game itself. More than a player. And he'd grown so weary, of seeing the edge of the board, so, so tired...

"Change of Heart," Bakura said, with no heart, "make me Zorc."

The spirit, ever obedient to the Duelist who was her master, however defeated he was, obeyed his new desire. She took hold of him, the clunky, wooden White Wizard, and raised him up to the beast's arm. Bakura felt himself sink inside, becoming dark, becoming —more silent than he had ever been before. A truly inactive game piece. It would have been frightful, but he could feel nothing so he smiled instead. "I am switching sides now, but I'll be back later, I think..."

Change of Heart, he noticed oddly, had hazel eyes. Now that, of all things, was certainly not a bad last sight.

She smiled again sadly as he sunk, and looked up briefly, once, beyond the window of the castle where in the apartment the Spirit passed the game world as he moved to the bedroom. A brief pulse fluttered through her —the real Ryou Bakura, trapped consciousness barely aware of his split self descending into darkness, was still well and alive within his shared body. There would be another Shadow Game, sooner or later, and now with the added assurance of his hidden game piece, her master was one step closer to his desire of defeating his possessor.

Down, down into nothing the White Wizard sunk.

She met his gaze once more, sadly, for she could not stay with him: the opponent they knew so little of, that the Ring Spirit had been preparing to face, would need as much help as he could get. She would turn his rolls lucky, protect his friends as much as she could.

For the Wizard did not know it, but he had already given her this command when he chose to enter the enemy's game piece.

Hazel...

A sad smile, but...

There was a strong look to her gaze, he thought...

Bakura felt his eyes slide shut, convinced that all would soon be fine.

...

_In_

_crept_

_the darkness._

(end)


End file.
